Into the Deep!
by Newclear
Summary: The Tennysons encounter an angel, and get wet to stop a certain Old One.
1. Chapter 1

Prologue

"Roger? Open up, it's time for dinner."  
Maria knocked thrice, then three times more.  
"I made your favorite…You know, that Korean Beef Stew you love so much."

It was then that she heard the crash.

Maria opened the door, and saw it. The walls of Roger's office had been filled with scratch marks, cut into the paint to reveal the gray cement underneath, and they all said the same thing.

THE ANGEL HAS ARRIVED THE DEEP ONE WILL FALL

She saw Roger on the floor, face-down, half of a protractor a few inches away from his left hand. She rushed over to him, and turned him over.

What she saw chilled her to the bone.

Roger had painstakingly carved ornate runes and symbols into his body, so alien to Maria that simply staring at them made her head hurt. She gingerly touched one of the wounds. Roger moaned, a sound so soft, you could say he didn't moan at all. But moan he did, and as he wheezed his last breaths, Maria held him closer to her breast. She could feel him dying in her arms.

Then, in a voice so low, it was almost a whisper, Roger said…

"CALL…MAX."


	2. Chapter 2

Max's Midnight Drive

click  
We have Roger's angel in the back, asleep in Ben's bunk. Gwen's asleep, as far as I know. Ben's sleeping in the passenger seat next to me. This has been one wild night.

I hadn't heard from either Roger or Maria in a long time, I hadn't expected the call, much less the kind of call that Maria made to me. Though I suppose it was to be expected. In our Plumber days, Roger had been the most attuned to that paranormal bullshit, walking the razor's edge of reality.

Last I saw Roger, he had been a strapping 250 pounds, curly blonde hair still pulling the ladies in. When I walked into his office a while ago, he looked like a skeleton wearing Roger's skin. His skin was loose over his emaciated form, a remnant from his larger days. The crown of blond hair he was so proud of had become nothing but thin wisps pathetically combed over his balding head. The runes and symbols carved into his chest almost looked as if they were carved into his very bones, judging by their depth.

Maria gave me the whole story. Apparently, it began when Roger took home a large book from a corner bookstore. He was all excited and jittery that day, but when he showed it to her, just looking at the book made cringe. The whole book just seemed…wrong to her. The way the leather looked like skin, how the letters looked like they were written in blood. That was three weeks ago, and since then, Roger had locked himself in there, not eating, and judging from the looks of his eyes, not sleeping.

It all came to a head yesterday, when she knocked on his office, and heard a crash. And then she called me.

I was too afraid to tell her, but some of the runes and symbols I understood. Plumbers get basic training against all kinds of attack, Physical and Mental. We Plumbers were exposed to various degrees of Physical and Mental Torture. Subjection to alien geometries and 4-dimensional objects and shapes, was one of them. The runes on Roger's chest were composed of them, and I picked up a tiny bit of what they said. Not that they helped, what I understood basically amounted to the insane mantra Roger had carved onto the walls.

I left Maria after I had called the cops. I had told the kids to stay in the Rustbucket, and when I came back both of them were asleep.

It was 9 o'clock when I left Maria's, and I found the boy wandering at the side of the road at around 11. He had been wrapped in a ragged white blanket, walking by the side of the road. I stopped, and asked where his parents were. He just gave me a blank stare. I asked where he came from, and he just looked up.

And now, I drive down this road, making my way to the safest place I know of, somewhere where we can protect Roger's angel…

Mount Rushmore.


	3. Chapter 3

Crash

Max finished recording his thoughts, and set the tape recorder aside. He could feel every year of his age as he drove, and he pinched the bridge of his nose to try and keep awake. He would stop and sleep if could, but he could feel something in his gut, a hunch if you will, that they were being followed. The feeling began when he picked up the kid, and he could still feel it now. He couldn't shake it, so he drove to put as much between them and their would-be pursuer. He knew that if they were found with the child, all of them would be in danger. Call him paranoid, but a healthy nurturing of one's paranoia never hurt anyone. It had kept Max alive for as long as he had been a Plumber, and it hadn't failed him yet.

Suddenly, a loud crash came from the top of the camper. Behind him, he could hear Gwen and Roger's angel wake up with a start. Ben woke up beside him, instantly alert.

Good, Max needed him alert.

He hit the brakes, but whatever had landed on the Rustbucket had a strong grip.

"Grandpa, what was that?" asked Ben.

Max pressed a button, and out from the dashboard popped a large rifle, small ports running down its sides pulsing with a soft blue light.

"Ben, get the Omnitrix ready. Go Ghostfreak, and see what our friend up there is up to."

Ben gave a firm nod, and went hero. The bright flash of light was nothing new to Max and Gwen, but Roger's angel had just come from sleep, and the light utterly shocked him. He gave out a loud cry, and a hand shot through the Rustbucket's roof, and grabbed the angel by his white hair. It gave a pull, and pulled the angel right through the roof.

Max gave Ben a look, but he already knew what to do.

Ben phased through the roof, and saw the angel, and his captor. He was wearing a white sleeveless hooded trenchcoat, baring rather muscular arms. He had the angel in his right hand, and somehow, Ben knew that he could see him.

"Tearing a hole through the roof of someone's car isn't very nice. Taking their friends…is even worse. Prepare to know fear." Said Ben, speaking as Ghostfreak.

"You've been had, mortal. Your efforts are valiant, but you've been protecting the enemy."

Then, the figure rammed his left hand right through the angel's chest.

"NOOOO!"

Ben bum-rushed the figure in the trenchcoat, and knocked him off the roof of the Rustbucket, taking the angel's bloodied corpse with him.

They both crashed hard onto the asphalt. Max and Gwen rushed outside, gun and spells at the ready. An orb of blue energy surrounded her clenched fists, while Max rocked his large energy rifle. They both took aim at the rising figure, waiting to see if it would be hostile to them as well.

"Stand down, that is all I ask you." said the figure, holding up hands that seemed to be covered in green, insectile armor.

"Give us three good reasons not to blow you away, and the other two don't matter." threatened Gwen.

"The being you saved and protected is not the angel your grandpa's psychic friend. It is understandable, as he hid his demonic taint pretty well."

But Max was unconvinced.

"And how do we know that you're telling the truth?" he asked.

"Because I believe him."

Max and Gwen looked beyond the figure, and a green flash heralded the return of Ben to human form.

"Check out the new kid."

Max and Gwen went over to what was once the child's corpse.

But it was a child no more.

A black the shade of charcoal had replaced the "angel's" once pale white skin. Knobby black horns jutted out from the demon's matted black hair. Its cherubic face had lengthened and had now resembled some dark parody of a goat.

Max couldn't see how he had been taken by the ruse. He had put both Ben and Gwen's lives in danger by taking that…_abomination, _that mockery of all things holy into the Rustbucket.

"And you, how do we know you're no demon in disguise as well?" asked Max, his features clouded by guilt.

The figure knelt, and jabbed his thumb into the demon's skull. The flesh around the figure's thumb began to burn. Soon, cracks began to appear in the demon's skull, a low flame burning under them. Fire shot out from the demon's eye sockets, and then it began to spout flames from every open orifice. The fire ceased, and the demon crumbled to ash.

"Demons cannot stand anything holy, much less our blessed essence."

Ben gave him a quizzical look.

"What do you mean by…'our'?"

It was the figure's turn to give him a quizzical look, which he pulled off with surprising ease, despite having no visible eyes.

"By 'our', I mean we angels. The angel your friend Roger was talking about, is me."


	4. Chapter 4

Hitchin'

The drive took longer now, as they now took backroads unfamiliar to the children. The angel sat in the front passenger seat, the two children asleep in their respective bunks. They had trouble sleeping after the excitement and having an arm-sized hole in the roof, but after the adrenaline buzz wore off, they were out like a light.

"Alright, I've given you the benefit of the doubt. Now will you tell me why you chase us for a few miles, and then tear a hole in my roof?" asked Max angrily, fatigue and stress doing a number on his temper.

"I was sent by my superior to protect you guys in the event the time the Great Old One's sleeper agent is activated, and he tries to resurrect him. I have reason to believe this sleeper agent would have to be an accomplished magician to be able to awaken the Great Old One." explained the Angel.

"And tearing a hole in my camper's roof helps this because?"

"…Okay, so I didn't think that part through. But I had to get to you quick, and, well…that was the most direct approach."

Max was silent for a while, quietly fuming about how the demon had duped him so easily, as well as the arm-sized hole in his goddamned roof.

"So, we're going to Hex then?" he asked, the anger slowly leaving his system.

"Who?"

"He's the only sorcerer we know, but he's a start."

It was the angel's turn to be quiet, and after a while, Max thought he had fallen asleep. He was feeling a little drowsy himself…

"I'm sorry about your friend." the Angel said suddenly, briefly jolting Max from his drowsiness.

"You don't have to be. Roger was always a bit too…sensitive concerning the supernatural, and I've always told him off about the whole arcane knowledge thing...Something wrong?" asked Max, when the Angel had grown silent once more.

"We've been talking this whole time, and I've realized that I don't know your name."

"You've been following us the whole time, and you didn't know who we were?"

The angel only gave a tiny shrug.

"I was homing in on the demon's scent. I really didn't give a damn about the specifics…I'm Nimeni." Said the Angel, holding out a hand.

Max held it in a firm grip and shook it.

"Name's Max, Max Tennyson. The two kids you almost fought were my grandchildren, Ben and Gwen. The kid with the fancy watch over there?"

Max pointed to a sleeping Ben, his jaw slack with a thin sliver of drool dripping out.

"That's Ben. You can probably guess which one is Gwen."

Max had noticed that Nimeni had not shown any sign of eyes under his hoodie since they met. What he imagined under it was worse in his mind's eye than what it would probably look like.

"I can see that you're staring at me, more precisely, under my hoodie. Well, since you've proven yourself to be people of good intention, very well, I will show you."

Nimeni lifted his hoodie, and Max felt his heart catch for a second before the hoodie was off. In that second he could think of a myriad horrors pertaining to eyes.

But when he saw the truth, all of those imagined horrors vanished.

Under Nimeni's hoodie, a blindfold covered both of his eyes. It was completely black, with a large red spot in its center, giving him a cycloptic look.

"Happy now?"

Max looked away for a second to check his bearings on the road, and gave a nod.

"Now, do you mind if I doze off for a bit?" asked Nimeni.

Max gave another nod as he focused on the drive. He checked the camper's dashboard clock. It was 1:16 AM, an unholy hour to be driving at night. He looked over to their strange new guest, but Nimeni had already turned away from him.

Max gave a sigh, and played a few of his Shag Carpet tapes…


End file.
